


Chains of Freedom

by 1V1



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: F/M, Stockholm Syndrome, Unhealthy Relationships, Viera Reader, implied sexual slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 13:10:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18152279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1V1/pseuds/1V1
Summary: The viera liaison for House Solidor, your relationship and service to Vayne is one born of practicality and luck. You owe him much- yet you give him so much more.You cannot help but wonder if he truly gives it in return.





	Chains of Freedom

The sound of airships rang in the city like beasts, echoing and rumbling, removing any sense of tranquility or serenity. You could not escape the magicite machines or the sound of humes, seeq, Bangaa, even the scattered Nu Mou, no matter where you would go for solace.   
There is no wood to offer soothing comfort, no soft breeze to carry the whisper of the falling leaves to your ears. True, their are other veira in Archades, its golden towers a cruel mockery of green trees, but all share the same pain inside. The loss of the wood hurts, and nothing seems to fill that void. 

“What progress do you have for me today?” The voice of the future emperor draws you from your thoughts. Your eyes moving from the window to the man at the door’s threshold.  
Vayne Carudas Solidor, the third son, the eldest living, and perhaps the most cunning hume you have ever met. Ambition, the lust for power and a greed for control marks him, and his eyes bleed with shadow. He is a living vessel for what is wrong with humes, your sisters would say. Yet he is to become emperor. He is-

“Little I am afraid. The other Veira agree that to seek to war with the wood would be unwise. We do not care for the law or lives of humes. To us, politics and power mean little.” Your eyes meet his, and your tongue feels like lead in your mouth. He knows the words before they leave your lips, you are sure.  
“The wood was here before the humes, and it will be here after.”

His boots echo in the vast empty space of your office. Almost impressive, given the amount of greenery you have brought in to drown out the dull thrum of the city. Plants adorn the walls and much of the floor. You hated the stone and metal of buildings. Hated the stench of oil and inks. So the greenery was a concession. An allowance given your kind and your purpose.

“So, even you and those who have left would tell me to avoid conflict with the golomore jungle?” He moves his stride to a nearby flowering plant, who’s name evades you, your eyes locked to the figure of the most dangerous being in Ivalice.   
“You underestimate my kind.”  
“And if we burned the wood?” The cold delivery sends a rocket of fear down your spine. Lost to her embrace you might be, but the idea he’d burn it down, the knowledge that he very well could, now that his ships can cross Jagd-

He turns, lip lifted in a cruel smirk.  
“And what of the proposed treaty?”  
“They will not like it.” You settle in the chair, tense, his gaze lingering. “But they will have heard of what your ships can do- what the empire is capable of and the lengths it will go. They will have no choice- and if they refuse they will see the folly of such a resistance.”  
“And what do you think?” He leans forward, hand brought to his chin as if thinking. He knows you well enough, knows that the way your nose twitches and tongue presses to the roof of your mouth tells him more than words. Unsettling, this hume. This would be Dynast King. 

“What I think matters little.” You reply, smooth as river stone. Calm, soothing, the rough waters of Vanye’s eyes pass over you.  
“It matters to me.” A lie. His sweet sincerity is a farce he uses to manipulate you, to make you think he cares for you when it is only your knowledge and willingness to do this that he keeps you. His ‘Vorpal Bunny’. 

You had once been a salve maker, but when it had come time to hunt the vorpal for it’s tail, you’d been a fool, running into slavers of all things. Rotten humes who were looking for veira to drug and take back to the capital to sell as exotic ‘companions’.   
It was Vayne who’s party came across the slavers on your trip to Archades. It was Vayne who cut them down himself, it was he who unlocked your cage-  
And he who reminded you that you had left the wood. Even taken, you had failed in your task, and it had been days since your leaving. The Vorpal Hare was gone, and returning to the wood now would bring shame. Not to mention, you were weaponless. You had no gil. So Vayne looked to you, a salve maker with nothing and made an offer. Accompany him to the capital, and in exchange, tell him about your people.

So you did.  
So you stayed.  
Sometimes you wondered why. He did not care for you you rationed, the way many humes did for their mates. He was male- and the idea of being with a male always was strange. It was not done among the veira. Yet…

“You would burn it to the ground if it meant you would get what you wanted.” He reached out, fingers brushing hair from your face, tracing the curve of your jaw before lifting you chin. Small he called you, small for your kind. He was right though- runt. You were a runt and lucky to have survived. Yet each time he reminded you, even in such benign ways like his touch, that gentle lift of your chin, you hated him a little bit more. You stayed and for what? For this?  
“And what do I want?” His voice teased, but the shadows in his eyes hungered.   
“To rule. To become a new Dynast King.” 

His lips are cold in their warmth. A kiss, he explained once upon a time. A way that humes and others might express their fondness and thanks. New, so unknowing to the world outside the wood had kissed him then. In thanks. Thanks for his rescue. Thanks for his kindness to give travel.   
Thanks for his cruelty, for with it you could survive.

He was a hume, consumed with madness and lust for power. His heart was a bed of thorns, yet they had taken root and ensnared you in their grasp. You were his vorpal bunny- the rare little dreamhare that was his undoing he said. You made him want- You made it easy to look at the world through distant eyes. You made the mist a drug- the sight of your going mad and thrashing killing as the mist screamed had him wanting to cast it aside.   
Mist- always mist he said. Hated and needed. A drug of humanity. 

You were a drug- his little veira, his exotic pet.

No chains or collars, no bars on windows or locks on doors. You were kept a prisoner of your own choice. You drank the poison of his honey sweet lies and yet had once known their antidote.   
“Shh, cease thinking my love.” Love he calls you. Does he? You don’t know. Humes express love in strange ways. He loves Larsa you know. He protects Larsa, would kill for his younger brother. He has done the same for you. But love of kin is different than love of a mate. Of a partner. Humes are strange and complex.

“Stop it.” His hard command draws your thoughts to him. The cold eyes of a ruler. A would be Dynast King. “You doubt my conviction?”  
You cannot answer him. You don’t know how. He does not know how veira mate. How this is so alien. So strange and yet.  
“I don’t know.” Your innocence he once said, was pure and good. Too good, he said, for a place like Archades. He’d confessed he should have sent you back had he known then what he knew now. 

He was your poison. His love a venom that ran in your blood. Vayne was the monster who would set the world aflame to free it from the Occuria. He would kill nations to see his world come to life.   
He was the man that professed his love of you, and had asked you to seek peace for him, because he knew that if he burned the wood that final part of you would die.   
The part that made you, you. The part that was veira. A child of the wood. Deaf to it’s words, did not mean you missed it’s voice. That you hated it. You feared it hated you. You never had the courage to go back and ask.

“I will not burn the wood.” His lips run down your jaw, soft touches of them pepper your neck. “Not for all the power in Ivalice.” He is so cruel to lie like this. “Your tears would kill me. They still do.” His lies so sweet.  
“You cried that night in my arms.” You had. The first night free, the first night you had faced the reality you could not return to the wood.   
“So I vowed I would never see you cry again.” His mouth is warm and bitter- his lies sound sweet to your ears all the same.   
“I will remake this world- you at my side.”   
“As what?” You whisper, afraid. Afraid of the truth. Afraid of his lies so dangerous they might kill you.

“My love.” He holds you close, his heart thunder against his chest, the armor cold as his eyes.   
“My queen.”

 

His gloves make it seem possible- a barrier of cloth between skin. Yet they hold you tenderly, gentle as the spring air while he administers those tokens of hume affection, kisses laid across your neck and jaw. The caress in your hair up the back of your neck to stroke you ears has a whimper leaving you. Too sensitive, this he knows- yet this he uses to make your resolve weaken, you barriers fall to him. 

His hands move south along your body, the clasps of clothing undone with precision, experience in his motions. Vayne knows how you are put together, and how to take you apart. Armor is pulled away, dark skin contrasting so sharply with his white gloves. The coarse fabric rubs each inch exposed, and when they brush across your peaked nipple you arch into him, his leg between your thighs, spreading you open and apart, to wait for him in readiness.   
“Darling-” His mouth catches your own with a sigh, more garments falling as he tastes like a dark lie, so bitter yet sweet it chokes your mind worse than mist.

When he moves away to derobe himself you cannot help how you lean to him, missing it, craving his touch. You wait for him there, against the desk, pleading for his return, hating this power he has over you.

Tanned skin to dusky earth- he is wheat- gold veins and tanned sunlight. You are the cool earth, soft and yielding soil from which all might find aid. 

His mouth spills your name like honey, sweet you drink it up as he fills you. Humes are full of such strife and conflict, yet as he marks your skin like artist upon a fresh canvas- teeth and tongue his brush, you keen. The trill of delight escapes your body has him smiling, holding you close as the city falls to an absent slumber- the only sounds you hear are his breath and voice. The scent of his sweat and sex mixing with the foliage of your office. 

“Vayne-” You utter his name, begging- yet the man knows your plea- His hips swirl, twisting and rubbing your core with a precision you knew somewhere inside you, no other would match. It is not his body that makes yours sing- it is him. His hunger, his darkness, the way he kisses you like he loves you like a mate and yet breeds you like a stud in rut.   
The wet sound of skin on skin breaks through, your body clenching as you cry out in his arms. He does not stop his need for you when you have reached your peak- rather it seems only to fuel him, to urge him to take you rougher, to bite and growl like he is mist drunk.

Over and over this dance plays out between you both. Your office, his- home, the palace, the wilds that night so long ago, where tears ran down your face and a hume male cradled you in his arms and told you he’d never let anyone hurt you ever again.

Yet as he spilled his seed, as your body tightened, urging his seed to take root, to find your center and bring life, you cried out a second time, tears at the corner of your eyes. He hurt you so this way, with his love, his hunger and ambition.  
Still, he holds you there on your desk, cum dripping out of you, pooling under your ass and staining the papers and scenting the room with the fragrance of breeding.

“Would you do it?” You ask him, looking up at his face, flushed with exertion from your mating, the darkness in his eyes abating and being replaced with that softness you saw that night so long ago- the night after he saved you.  
“Would you burn the wood to have your new world?”

His silence is an answer in itself, and the sorrow of truth radiates from him.

“Stay by my side.” He begs, forehead pressed to your own. “Stay. Help me save this world- take it back from the Gods.”

You want to say yes- but you do not have to. You kiss him, tasing sweet lies and the dark hunger of humes.   
“I am your dream hare.” You whisper in dark locks, fingers running through tangles and the lies slip easier. “I will stay.”

The woods are silent, the cages of freedom binding and choking. The collar of love digs deeper into your heart as you bleed out unseen in his arms while he makes love to you again.  
His lust for freedom will kill you.  
Yet you want it all the same.


End file.
